Discrimination, harassment, and the NBA

The Boston Globe
By Anita Hill October 15, 2007

THE $11.6 million jury award in Anucha Browne Sanders's sexual harassment case sends a strong message to the New York Knicks sports franchise that sexual harassment will not be tolerated. But the value of the message will be lost if the Knicks and other sports teams respond by hiring fewer, not more, women managers.
Ironically, the NBA has a better record for hiring women than most sports. Though the league does quite well in some categories, this year, the University of Central Florida's Racial and Gender Report Card authored by Richard Lapchick gave the league an "F" for the number of women team vice presidents and a "D" for the number of women employed as senior administrators.
Newspaper accounts of the trial presented a grim picture of Browne Sanders's time with the Knicks. In addition to testifying about how Isiah Thomas harassed her, Browne Sanders, the Knicks' former top marketing executive, described a work environment that was unsupportive of her and her efforts. For example, Browne Sanders recounted that Knicks star player Stephon Marbury called her a bitch because she fired Marbury's cousin for sexually harassing an intern. Both the intern and Marbury's cousin worked for Browne Sanders.
Despite a league policy against sexual harassment, NBA commissioner David Stern has not taken any action against the Knicks. He has said he may recommend "sensitivity training across the league."
In considering the Browne Sanders verdict, I was reminded of an earlier suit that changed the world of sports. In 1977, Melissa Ludtke, a sports writer, successfully sued Major League Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn so that women reporters could have equal access to interview players. The law and the facts were on Ludtke's side and Kuhn, as league leader, should have avoided the litigation.
Even after Ludkte's victory, players verbally and even physically abused female reporters who were simply doing their jobs. The women persevered. But had Kuhn voluntarily opened the door to female journalists he would have sent a message to teams and prevented at least some of the blatantly sexist behavior from occurring.
Sixteen years ago, in the wake of my testimony in the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearing, women coined a phrase, "they just don't get it." "They," of course, were not only members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but men in general.
In the days after the hearing, I received thousands of supportive letters, the overwhelming majority of which were from women who identified personally with my testimony. Many men who wrote characterized sexual harassment as the fantastic, vengeful invention of disgruntled employees or spurned lovers.
Four women and three men made up the federal jury that concluded that the harassment Browne Sanders suffered warranted $11.6 million in punitive damages. On the day of the verdict and in response to Clarence Thomas's renewed challenges to my 1991 testimony, I received hundreds of supportive e-mails and calls from around the country. To my surprise, about 50 percent of those responses came from men who through their own observations or the stories told them by their mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters understand the problem and its harm.
Neither the correspondence I received nor the Browne Sanders verdict is a scientific public survey. Yet, they both are signs that some consensus around the issue of sexual harassment is building. A kind of "sensitivity training" is already occurring among the population. But the question of just how far are we willing to go to stop sexual harassment remains.
In the male-dominated world of major league sports, one wrong-headed, knee jerk reaction is to eliminate women from the workplace - no women, no sexual harassment, no problem. Not only would that be unacceptable, but as more women armed with law degrees and MBAs seek entry in the business of sports, it would be impossible to maintain.
Browne Sanders has said that she filed her suit for all women, and women will be served if the verdict encourages them to come forward to report workplace abuses. Women will be better served if more is done to prevent abuse from occurring in the first place. Browne Sanders has done her part. Now the NBA should act.
Stern has vowed to put the issue on the agenda for the NBA board of governors meeting this month. At the very least, he should question whether the lack of women in management roles contributes to sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination against them. Conducting an audit of teams' hiring and other employment policies for their impact on women would be a good start. With the Browne Sanders verdict, indications are that Stern has the law and growing public sentiment to back him up.
Anita F. Hill is a guest columnist and professor of law, social policy, and women's studies at Brandeis University and a visiting scholar at Wellesley College, the Newhouse Center for the Humanities, and Wellesley Center for Women.
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